An Aging Ideology
by Blue Beluga
Summary: The war is over and the world starts to heal itself. However, peace brings with it the time for the Avatar to dwell on the past. Aang has a conversation with Sokka on his choices towards the end of the war. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything associated with Avatar or Nickelodeon. Not that I would actually want to be associated with that network.

AN: My first Avatar fic. A one-shot, as I have given up on trying writing chapter stories. I look forward to any useful criticism people may have.

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**An Aging Ideology**

It was already the middle of the night down in the South Pole. As far as Aang knew, everyone had gone to sleep already. It was this solitude that Aang had been seeking when he slipped out of his igloo and made his way outside of the ice wall that now protected the village.

He sighed quietly, letting his gaze settle on the vast expanse of stars above him. The war had been over for nearly four months and he had come back with Sokka and Katara to the South Pole to help with the rebuilding. Yet while the world moved towards peace, his mind and his heart were feeling more chaotic every day.

What had been troubling him had started to infiltrate his dreams as well, which was why he was now sitting outside in the middle of the night.

His reverie was broken by the familiar crunching noise of someone walking through the snow. Glancing back for a moment, he registered that the person approaching him wasn't a threat and continued his star gazing.

"Why are you here Sokka?" Aang asked as the approaching person stopped next to him, his voice genuinely curious.

"Because you're my friend and I'm concerned? Because I wanted to make sure you didn't disappear on us? Because I couldn't sleep and I watched you leave? Take your pick."

"Why are you awake?"

"Thinking about Suki and how we are going to make it work," he paused, giving Aang a sad look, "it's a bit hard when you are the Chief's son and your girlfriend is the leader of a group of foreign warriors. We both have responsibilities to our people. I suppose it can never be easy."

"I don't know what to tell you," Aang sighed, his gaze still fixed on the twinkling stars above him "I suppose I should consider myself lucky that there isn't much tying me to one place or another."

"Right,"the older teen replied, not missing the morose tone in Aang's voice. "So are you going to tell me what you're doing out here or do I need wake Katara and have her drag it out of you?"

"Sokka, you grew up with the war, understanding that as a male of your tribe, you would one day be expected to fight one day, right?"

"And you knew you were the Avatar," he responded, "and you knew you would have to maintain peace and keep the world in balance. What's your point?"

"Tell me," Aang finally turned his face away from the sky and met his companion's gaze, "am I hanging onto an archaic ideology?"

"Wait, what?" Whatever Sokka had been expecting, it certainly wasn't that. "Do I want even to know what brought this on?"

"I've been feeling troubled," Aang replied quietly. "Ever since the end of the war, I have had time to think, especially on the last few days before the return of Sozin's Comet. I almost failed again, Sokka. I can't help but think of how close I was to losing, all because I was clinging to the teachings of the monks."

"Aang, have you… no, never mind."

Aang sighed, looking at his friend and seeing his indecisiveness.

"Just say it Sokka," he replied. "I'm willing to listen to what you have to say."

"Okay then. So have you ever, you know, considered that the Monks might be wrong?"

"What?!"

"Just hear me out here," Sokka said calmly, holding his hands up defensively. "I'm not telling you that they were wrong or that they might be wrong about everything. Just… well, perhaps their teachings aren't completely compatible with the situation, especially you being the Avatar and all that."

"Hmph." Aang crossed his arms in agitation. "You sound like Yangchen. Go ahead then and I'll try to keep an open mind."

Deciding that now wasn't the time to ask who Yangchen was, Sokka nodded and continued on with his thought.

"All life is sacred, right?"

"Of course."

"But some life is more valuable than other life, right?"

"What? No!"

"Are you telling me that you don't hold Katara's life higher than, say, Azula's?"

"That's a bad example!" Aang responded furiously. "Yes, she was the enemy and more than a bit insane, but there is always another way besides death to defeat your enemy. Just look at Ozai!"

"So you value Ozai above your own life?"

"What? No! I mean… I don't know!"

"Aang, I wasn't going to say this before, especially not where Katara might hear me, but that was a ridiculously stupid thing for you to do."

"But…"

"But nothing! You risked your life to save his! What if you had failed? You told me that it was risky, that it could have destroyed you! I saw his energy nearly consume yours! You risked everything, the whole world, and for what? So you wouldn't have to kill someone?" Sokka took a breath before continuing. "That's not even mentioning what it would have done to us! Do you have any idea how much I was dreading bringing the news to Katara that you were killed? Do you have any idea what that would have done to her? You didn't see her after you fell at Ba Sing Sei! Never mind that the last time you two would have spoken was during an argument! It would have destroyed her."

"Honestly Sokka, at the time, it would not have mattered to me."

"Could you repeat that please? I could have sworn you just said that hurting Katara wouldn't have mattered!" Really, this was far too much for him to deal with in the middle of the night. Why couldn't Aang have his identity crisis, or whatever this was, during the day, when he was rested?

"I understand now what the Guru was saying when he told me that I had to let go of my earthly attachments. It didn't have to be forever, just for the moment, just for when I needed to draw upon the cosmic energies."

"Um Aang, what are you talking about?"

"My failure at Ba Sing Sei. I lied, I hadn't mastered the Avatar State. I couldn't open the last chakara. At the time I didn't understand and I panicked."

"Okay, great, you found some piece of Avatar wisdom. What does that have to do with Katara and Ozai or whatever?"

"I loved Katara for a long time Sokka, but during our time on Ember Island, I was given the impression that she didn't return my feelings. So I took what I learned from the Guru and, well…"

"So you let go of your 'earthly attachments', which, if I'm hearing you correctly, is mostly Katara?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"This is absurd."

"Sorry?"

"Your damn defense mechanisms," the older teen huffed. "A threat is too powerful, you slip into the Avatar state. Something is too emotionally painful, you just let go of your 'worldly attachments.' Honestly Aang, that's a bit scary how you can just let go of your humanity like that."

"It's not quit that simple!"

"Isn't it? Do I need to remind you of how you were after losing Appa? Or how about that time you were telling me about the Face Stealer? Tell me Aang, if you could let go of Katara so easily, why can't you let go of the Air Nomads. That's what's bothering you, isn't it? Their teachings are conflicting with your reality and you don't know how to cope!"

"Sokka, it's not the same!"

"Of course it's not. One is an obscure concept of a dead people while the other is a woman who cares about you deeply and you care about as well. Your right, there is absolutely no difference at all!" Okay, he knew he was laying it thick right now and he probably could have been a bit more sensitive, but damn it, he was tired and confused!

"Sokka…" It almost hurt him to see just how conflicted Aang was, but he pressed on. Leaving it here would probably do more harm than good.

"Aang, you don't eat meat, right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question."

"Yeah, so?"

"You stick with vegetables, correct?"

"What are you getting at Sokka?" Aang asked, more than a little irritated right now.

"Plant's are alive as well, aren't they? They are born, they grow, they die. They track the sun to survive, have defenses against predators, reproduce. But you still eat them, kill them, if you will."

"I suppose…"

"So you value animal life over plant life. Now I'm not saying you should consider your enemies animals. Well, perhaps Ozai and Azula, but that's neither here nor there right now. The point is, sure, all life is sacred, but sometimes you have to value one life over another. You do it everyday with your choice of food, which I do respect, by the way, but you have also done it in combat as well."

"What do you mean?" Aang said, "I've never killed anyone!"

"Haven't you?"

"No!"

"Then what happened at the North Pole?"

"I…" Sokka felt a bit bad about pushing this hard on Aang, but now he saw something he didn't expect; acknowledgement. So he pushed on, blindly hoping that something he said would click with his friend and he could get out of whatever funk he was i.

"When you destroyed that fleet , what drove you then? Was it defense of the North Pole Water Tribe? Defense of your friends? Revenge for the moon spirit? Or perhaps was it revenge for them trying to do to my people what they did to yours?"

"I don't know what you are talking about Sokka," Aang looked away, trying to hide his distress.

"You don't honestly believe no one died after what you did? After all the ships you destroyed, the Fire Nation soldiers you washed away into the freezing ocean?"

The silence seemed deafening for Sokka. In truth, he was quite sure why he was offloading onto Aang like this and he was terrified that the young Avatar might go all glowy on him when he realized what he had done. He was perhaps even prepared for that. What he wasn't prepared for was what Aang said next.

"I know," Aang said quietly.

"What?" Sokka almost screeched, now utterly confused. "You knew?"

"Yeah, I knew."

"But… but what about that talk about taking another's life? What you told Katara when she went after the raiders? The rest of us when you refused to kill Ozai?"

"It's different."

"Aang?" Sokka pressed.

"I…" Aang shook his head, the corners of his eyes beginning to tear up. His legs seemed to give out from under him as he slumped down into the snow.

Concerned, Sokka lowered himself down next to the Avatar.

"I don't go into a battle intending to kill," Aang said quietly. "What I did at the North Poll was terrible, and I hate myself for doing it, but it wasn't necessarily wrong. What you and everyone else asked of me with Ozai, what Katara planned for Yon Rha, was an execution, to go into battle with the intent to kill."

"I remember when I returned to the Southern Air Temple found Gyatso's body. Spread out in front of him were perhaps a dozen or more corpses of Fire Benders. It took me time to understand why; why Gyatso, the man who taught me almost everything I know, about how every life was sacred, about evasion and avoidance and separating myself from worldly concerns, would have met his death surrounded by corpses."

"It wasn't until I watched Zhao kill the Moon Spirit that I understood. Gyatso didn't go into battle that day with the intent to kill; he killed because the situation demanded that it be done to save his people from annihilation. When I merged with the Water Spirit, I made the choice that whatever was needed to save the water tribe and the world. But I didn't set out to kill. Had the Fire Nation soldiers laid their weapons down, they wouldn't be harmed. While the Water Spirit was enraged, I still had some control."

"Afterwards," Aang stated, his voice still quiet, the steady tone slightly unnerving Sokka, "I could pretend it never happened. I could pretend that it was just the Water Spirit that killed those people, that I hadn't gone against everything I had ever been taught. It was easy, really, when no one else called me on it."

"Despite all the lies I have told myself, in the middle of the night, it would come back to haunt me."

"Would you rather have had the Fire Nation destroy the Northern Water Tribe?" Sokka asked quietly.

"No! And if I had to, I would do it again." He seemed to deflate after announcing this. "That doesn't mean I like it, or that I'm proud of it."

"Couldn't you have made the same argument about Sozin? By ending him, how many lives would be saved? By doing what you did, how many lives did you risk?"

Sokka waited patiently as he watched Aang mull the thought over.

"I don't have an answer for you Sokka," he stated finally.

"Look Aang, you asked if your teachings were archaic, and I don't have definite answer for you. They aren't my teaching and I personally don't think they make much sense, at least not for the Avatar, but that's just me. I think, in the end, this is something that you are going to have to figure out on your own."

"I know. I guess I've always known."

"Wisdom Aang, isn't taught, it's learned," Sokka threw out.

"Wow Sokka, that was pretty deep for you!"

"Whatever," he waved away the comment as he was overtaken by a yawn. "So are you going to go to bed now?"

Aang shook his head before heading off towards the stables where Appa was sleeping.

"No, I have to go find my answers."

"Wait, what are you doing?" Sokka asked as he watched Aang walk towards the stables.

"I need to leave Sokka, I need to meditate, to figure this out on my own."

"But you can meditate here!" All hints of fatigue disappeared as he realized what Aang was doing.

"No, there are too many distractions."

"I am not letting you just leave," Sokka stated firmly, stepping in front of Aang while drawing his sword. Aang stared at Sokka, surprised that his friend would draw a weapon on him.

"Are you really going to try and keep me prisoner here?"

"No," he replied, keeping his sword raised, "I am going to try and stop you from disappearing on Katara. You can't do that to her. And if I have to cut you a bit, well, Katara can heal you later as you explain to her why you got those cuts."

Aang paused as he thought about what Sokka had just said.

"You're right, that's not fair. What if I give you my word that I will be back within two weeks?"

"Two weeks?"

"I was planning on going to the Southern Air Temple. It is peaceful there and I can focus on this matter alone."

Sokka was torn. He knew what Aang meant. With the warriors back at the Southern Village as well as the members from the North, the village wasn't the quiet place it once was. He also knew that Katara would insist on talking with Aang, which would end up distracting him and he wouldn't get, well, this thing that was bothering him resolved.

"All right," he said, lowering his sword. "I'll give you two weeks, but if you break Katara's heart, you know, by doing something stupid like leaving, I am going to hunt you down, got it?"

"Got it," Aang gave a slight bow, "and thank you Sokka."

Sokka watched a few minutes later as Appa flew off into the starlit sky. Aang knew how to take care of himself, he was the Avatar after all. Right now his concern was defusing Katara's worry and getting some sleep.

His sister could wait until morning.

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AN: I hope I didn't wander too much. My one major complaint about the show is how it never delved too much into Aang's past. We saw how the death of their parents affected Katara, Sokka, and Zuko, yet Aang lost everybody and I never felt that was resolved properly in the series. Let me know what you think.


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